Cosplay murder: Tough lessons in life for our teenagers

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OUR hearts ache with great pain whenever we hear of children or teenagers being brutally murdered. It’s only natural to grieve for the victims and their families because we are human, with emotions and feelings. How could anyone take the lives of innocent children, and in a most heinous manner in some cases? This is a cruel world indeed!

It’s particularly heart-wrenching when a murder takes place in your own neighbourhood. This week, I felt particularly sad and uptight upon hearing of the gruesome murder of 15-year-old Ng Yuk Tim.

The schoolgirl had gone to the home of a male friend to help him design a costume, as they were both cosplay enthusiasts. She left her home in Bandar Tun Razak in Cheras at 11am last Monday and used the LRT to the Kelana Jaya station.

Her 23-year-old friend, whom she met via social media five years earlier, was known to her family. He brought her to his house in Kampung Cempaka in Petaling Jaya, which is a five-minute drive from the Kelana Jaya LRT station.

From the balcony of my home, I can see Kampung Cempaka. Just to give readers in Kuching an idea how close my home is to the murder scene, it’s like looking out of the window of Hilton Kuching and seeing Pangkalan Batu. It’s a mere 10-minute walk.

Kampung Cempaka is one of the many Chinese new villages set up by the MCA in the 70s in Selangor to enable low-income Chinese families to build a home. It’s similar to the 0.8 point land given by the state government to Attap Pah families in Kuching many years ago.

The murder suspect, whose name has not been made public, came from a broken family. According to his grandmother, the young man’s mother left the family when he was still very young. After his father died a year ago, he and an older sister had been staying with their 80-year-old grandmother.

When Yuk Tim did not return home later that Monday afternoon, her worried mother, Sim Yee Ling, mounted a search for her in and around Petaling Jaya. After failing to find her daughter, Sim lodged a police report.

An alert journalist who interviewed her the next day then suggested that she seek the help of the chairman of the Selangor Community Policing Association Kuan Chee Heng.

It was Kuan who solved the murder case when he managed to get the suspect to confess to the murder. A former policeman, Kuan met Sim and the suspect at the Kelana Jaya station. The suspect had pretended to help look for the missing girl. Kuan, a sharp-eyed crime watcher, became suspicious after he saw bite marks on the suspect’s hand.

The suspect later confessed that he had attempted to rape Yuk Tim in his house. When the teenager fought back, he struck her on the head with a dumbbell. A post-mortem revealed that she died from severe head injuries due to three heavy blows to the head.

That same night, the suspect led police to a spot in Kota Kemuning in Shah Alam where they made the macabre discovery of Yuk Tim’s body, which was stuffed inside a gaudy green suitcase.

Yuk Tim’s death was senseless and tragic. What lessons can we draw from this tragedy? How can we better teach our teenage children to be more wary of acquaintances they meet online?

As this case has proven, it really does not matter how old the friendship is. In many cases, online friends are just that – they are ‘faceless’ pals even if you have met them in person. They are not your family friends or your classmates whom you’ve know very well for years.

For all of the social media’s many positives, there are also the negatives. Unlike talking to someone in person, an individual’s actions online, specifically through social networking sites, are forever traceable. Bad decisions or a moment’s lack of judgement can have effects that haunt you for the rest of your life.

A Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission study last year found that children below 15 formed 11 per cent of national home Internet users while those aged between 15 and 19 made up 8.6 per cent of the users.

For teenagers, the risks are even greater due to a lack of experience and a sense of invincibility. In reality, social networking services do teenagers a whole lot more bad than they do good.

They increase stress levels, cause tension, lead to arguments and serve as a distraction from important things, and can even cause depression and lead to suicide.

Because so many teenagers are completely unaware of the dangers, they walk right into the trap. The only way for realisation to occur is for the worst to happen to them personally, or to a friend.

Yuk Tim’s fate was sealed when she first got to know the suspect on Facebook five years ago. She was only 10 years old then while the suspect was already 18. One wonders why an 18-year-old would want to befriend a 10-year-old kid.

Let me put it in another dimension. What could a student doing either Form 6 or matriculation at 18 have anything in common with a kid in Primary 4? Could he be a predator biding his time?

The irony of this case is that Yuk Tim was a member of the suspect’s cosplay team and had taken part in several cosplay events with him.

Cosplay, short for costume play, is like a hobby where participants don costumes to represent an anime (cartoon) character.

The suspect is also a well-known personality among the small Cosplay community in Malaysia. He has won several prizes for his performances in the past.

So, what caused Yuk Tim’s male friend to snap suddenly that Monday afternoon? We will never know unless we hear it from his own mouth during the court hearing later. Monday was only the second time she was alone with him, as we now know.

Yuk Tim’s mother said she was unaware that her daughter went to the male friend’s house alone. But she innocently did and met with her tragic end.

And where did she meet him in the first place? On Facebook!

Please be more wary of online ‘friends’ – that’s the simple advice I want to impart to our teenagers out there.

I hope I will not be reading about another senseless murder in my Petaling Jaya neighbourhood for a very long time.

Comments can reach the writer via [email protected].